Ritual

Our friends showed up on Friday around 8 p.m., bearing, as they always do, good things to eat: a freshly baked fruit tart, jam from their raspberry bushes, a jar of homemade salsa. They come down nearly every August to see us and to visit the State Fair. They always set off in time to see their friends' kids exhibit their dairy cows.

Their visit always reminds us that summer is fast turning into fall.

After they headed out for the fair on Saturday morning, Doug and I turned on the TV to watch Teddy Kennedy's funeral. We ended up watching much more of it than we had intended. I was struck by all those umbrellas in the rain, those lovely wet red bricks in front of the church, the thoughtful canopy erected for the public to stand under as they wept and waved their flags.

I was struck by the tears on our President's cheeks, and the look of utter despair in the big, lost eyes of Patrick Kennedy, the senator's son. The honor guard, with their white gloves and their prissy, formal steps. The gold and white and red robes of the priests. The music, the formality, all that black.

I'd walk away and do something else--throw some laundry in, brush one of the dogs, look through the newspapers--and then come back and watch Yo-Yo Ma play the cello, a look of great emotion creasing his face (was he choking back tears? or did I imagine that?), or watch the priest shaking incense above the white-draped coffin, or listen to the Kennedy grandchildren eulogize their beloved grandfather. To us he was a Kennedy, with all the complicated responses that brings, but to them he was the guy who took them sailing, and told jokes, and ate Thanksgiving dinner with them, and loved them.

When I was younger, I didn't think much of traditions--big family meals were both boring and contentious and left me unpleasantly stuffed, and look how much work they were for my mother--don't start thinking that I'm going to follow in those footsteps! And funerals were silly--the dead don't care! They're just a ripoff dreamed up by the funeral industry! And doing anything at the same time every year (starting school, attending the fair, planting the garden, coloring eggs) was oppressive and unimaginative.

I did not then see the comfort in ritual, nor the value in tradition. I think that's not an unusual reaction for a young person. When we're young, we should be pushing the boundaries, exploring, trying new things, not wedded to the old ways automatically. Much better if you choose later to return to the old ways on your own, and for your own reasons.

And I have, more than I had realized. Listening to "Ave Maria," watching the Kennedys kneel and cross themselves every time they entered a pew, greeting our friends as they returned from the fair, filled with stories of cattle barns and Midway rides and giant pretzels, I felt reassured by the sameness, the tradition. I know what to expect. I know how others might behave, I know how it is OK to feel. I even get a sense that I know what it all might mean. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.